A Third of City Department Heads Meet Mayor’s Savings Goal

About a third of Los Angeles city department heads have met Mayor Richard Riordan’s goal of finding ways to improve efficiency and save money in their budgets for the next fiscal year, the mayor’s budget director said Monday.

Christopher O’Donnell said the general managers of several of the city’s 39 departments have identified potential savings representing at least 6% of their 1995-96 budgets.

However, based on his preliminary review of the budget proposals due Friday, there were “probably four or five departments that I think missed the mark,” and will be asked to try again, O’Donnell said. He declined to identify the offending departments until he has time to make a more careful review and brief the mayor over the next several days.

Still, the response was much better than last year, when “practically nobody” took seriously the mayor’s demand for cost efficiency, O’Donnell said.

The changes identified by general managers as part of the annual budget-writing process could translate into “real dollar savings” of from $50 million to $100 million next year, O’Donnell said. Although that savings does not take into account salary increases or other added costs, it nonetheless provided a spot of good news for the city, which is facing a fiscal year-end deficit of up to $250 million in its current $3.9-billion budget.